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North Adams Librarian to Retire After 30 Years
By Jack Guerino, iBerkshires Staff
03:48AM / Tuesday, February 09, 2016
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The library trustees are looking for ways to advocate for the library in the community.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Longtime library employee Robin Martin intends to retire in early May, and library officials say they'll feel her absence keenly.

Not only are they losing an experienced employee of 30 years, but her departure as adult reference services librarian may lead to a cascade of staffing issues.

"She has been with the city for 30 years, and I would like to do something communitywide [to recognize her]. There are a lot of patrons who would like to honor her service," Library Director Mindy Hackner told the trustees Monday.

"I am dreading her leaving because she is the keeper of all of our institutional knowledge and she has done a superb job."

Hackner said she plans to advertise the position even though the current children's librarian is qualified. She said posting the position would be more fair and would allow her to gather a list of people interested in working at the library.

The trustees agreed to have some sort of celebration for Martin, and acknowledged that her leaving could create more staffing gaps in the library.

"I am basically taking Robin's salary and redistributing it, but I am not getting the physical body," Hackner said. "The five people that are here, if they take all of their time off, it's over half of our open hours. I don't have enough bodies to plug into the spots so if one person is out and someone has an emergency, we are down to a point where we can't operate unless we have volunteers."

She said she often has to leave volunteers running the desk, which is not fair to those giving their time to the library.

Hackner said if they use the city's figures in the budget and they move the children's librarian up, a part-time worker would be moved to that position. It would be 33.5 hours a week, which translates to a day without a children's librarian.

"It's a modest budget," Hackner said. "If you really want to play hard ball, we can go for more, but I would ask that we stay with this for now given the city's situation."

She said the library could also maintain some salaries of $10 an hour and the savings could be used to hire another part-time employee to fill in staffing gaps. She said it also would be possible to shift salaries around.

Hackner said there were also discussions about closing the library an extra day a week.

Hackner said she recently asked the mayor for an additional 15-hour-a-week employee to help stabilize the library. She said she was refused because even though the money is in the budget, it may not be in coming years and that person would have to be let go.

The trustees felt Hackner should submit a budget with the increases that would support the staffing needs.

"It seems to me we should be asking for more," Trustee Rich Remsberg said. "Every time this comes up, we spend a lot of time talking about stuff like this and it seems like those should be extreme examples not standard operation."

Hackner said she will ask but does not anticipate any a changes in funding from the city.

"This has been one of my biggest fears for the library," she said. "That it is being slowly strangled ... strangled is one word, starved is another."

Remsberg added that the library should continue to find ways to raise its own funds and to raise the library's political profile so people are aware of its value.

Hackner brought up another budget concern and explained the transformers inside the air ducts are obsolete and have to be rebuilt. Each transformer costs $150 and there are 25 in the building.

If the library has a power outage, the air ducts shut down and close and someone has to manually adjust them.

In other business, McCann Technical School teacher Scott Botto showed the trustees a display case on the second floor, made by McCann carpentry students, that displays many of the artifacts he has found throughout the community with his metal detector.

After gaining permission to display a few of his treasures, Botto organized the display and provided information on the artifacts, some going back to the 18th century.

Botto said the he often uses the library to research what he finds or to scope out new locations.

He added that he felt it was important to return history to North Adams.

"This is our history and it belongs to us," he said. "I wanted to bring it back."

Botto said he would refresh the box when he finds new objects.

The library will receive a new copy machine.

After a Xerox technician could not get the notoriously troublesome machine to work correctly, the company pledged to send a new one.

The trustees voted to change the temporary status policy for new library patrons from six months to three.

The trustees also welcomed new trustee Nicole Prokop.

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